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by Nordic » Fri Jan 28, 2011 2:28 am
New evidence delivered to parliament yesterday revealed that almost 3kg of cocaine were found last year in the cellar of a flat allegedly provided free of charge to one of Berlusconi's guests at his villa outside Milan.
by vanlose kid » Thu Feb 03, 2011 5:11 pm
by Jeff » Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:03 am
Mystery over claims of naked Silvio Berlusconi photographs
Lawyers for Silvio Berlusconi have filed legal actions over investigations that have allegedly found photographs of him naked in the company of young women.
By Nick Squires, in Venice 12:20AM GMT 07 Feb 2011
The pictures are alleged to have been taken by one or more of the showgirls who attended the Italian prime minister’s so-called “bunga bunga” parties at his mansion outside Milan.
An Italian newspaper reported that the existence of the images had prompted a bidding war between magazines and photo agencies, with a starting price of €1 million (£840,000).
The premier’s legal team said that the pictures, if they even existed, “would be fakes, manipulated pictures, photo montages”. They have nonetheless filed complaints with judicial authorities and Italy’s privacy watchdog as a precaution against publication.
Investigators seized computers and mobile phones from young women whom Mr Berlusconi, 74, allegedly installed as a “harem” in an upmarket apartment complex in Milan. They are examining the devices to see whether they contain still or video images of the prime minister’s home, Villa San Martino.
...
On Saturday, Left-wing intellectuals addressed thousands of people at a rally in Milan to demand his resignation. “We are here to defend the honour of Italy, to remind the world that not all Italians are the same,” Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose, told the crowd.
...
by hava1 » Mon Feb 07, 2011 9:55 am
by norton ash » Mon Feb 07, 2011 10:36 am
“We are here to defend the honour of Italy, to remind the world that not all Italians are the same,” Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose, told the crowd.
I'm glad Eco's part of the anti-Berlusconi force.
by hava1 » Mon Feb 07, 2011 11:54 am
norton ash wrote:“We are here to defend the honour of Italy, to remind the world that not all Italians are the same,” Umberto Eco, the author of The Name of the Rose, told the crowd.
Ciao, Umberto!
by norton ash » Mon Feb 07, 2011 2:13 pm
defend the honor of italy ? what this suppose to mean ? Eco supports reactionary forces in Israel.
by vanlose kid » Sun Feb 13, 2011 6:56 pm
by Jeff » Sun Feb 13, 2011 7:54 pm
by American Dream » Sun Feb 13, 2011 8:29 pm
by Nordic » Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:27 am
by Stephen Morgan » Mon Feb 14, 2011 8:57 am
Giorgio Maone writes "Italian Police just seized the Savona e Ponente Blog because the 60-year-old journalist Valeria Rossi posted a satirical article titled 'I want to kill Berlusconi,' writing that 'you can't feel guilty of wishing him death, because he's not human: he's an alien, with incredible psychic powers.' Otherwise, how could such a clown, with multiple pending trials for corruption, tax offenses, abuse of power and even child prostitution, convince the majority of the other politicians and a consistent slice of Italian people to keep him as their prime minister for almost 20 years now? Here's a mirror of the incriminating text (Italian)." And here's a translation to English.
by Jeff » Sun Feb 27, 2011 8:39 pm
Silvio Berlusconi sex case witness has car torched
Nadia Macri, who claims to have had sex with Italy's prime minister, says she has received menacing messages
John Hooper in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 27 February 2011 20.38 GMT
The car belonging to one of the women who gave evidence to investigators about Silvio Berlusconi's alleged bunga-bunga sessions was set alight at the weekend. Nadia Macri, who claims to have twice had sex with Italy's 74-year-old prime minister, said: "I really don't think that the prime minister has anything to do with my car."
She told reporters she had recently received a number of menacing text messages that she had shown to police after the discovery of the burnt-out car. Berlusconi's lawyers have strenuously denied Macri's allegations and contest her claim that the prime minister's dinners at his house outside Milan led on to orgiastic sessions in a room equipped for pole-dancing.
Another female guest at parties given by Berlusconi had her car set alight in June 2009. Barbara Montereale, a model, was among the witnesses in an investigation into the activities of a businessman who admitted recruiting dozens of women for dinners at the prime minister's residence in Rome.
The fire occurred after she gave a press interview in which she said that, after one of the dinners she had attended, Berlusconi slept with another guest, who was a prostitute.
by cptmarginal » Sun Mar 06, 2011 12:50 pm
He is at an age when most Italian men turn their thoughts to pottering around their vegetable garden or whiling away the hours in their local piazza cafe.
But 79-year-old Emilio Fede, a television anchorman, finds himself at the epicentre of the extraordinary prostitution scandal engulfing the Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
While attention has focused on the parade of glamourous young women who allegedly prostituted themselves with the prime minister, the men alleged to have masterminded what was in effect a vast pimping network are anything but youthful.
Mr Fede is accused along with Dario 'Lele' Mora, 55, a celebrity agent, of procuring escort girls to attend "bunga bunga" sex parties with the 74-year-old prime minister, who is due to face trial himself next month accused of paying for sex with an under-age prostitute.
Prosecutors are expected within days to present a dossier of evidence to a judge in Milan in which they will request that Mr Mora and Mr Fede face court on related charges, along with Nicole Minetti, 25, an Anglo-Italian former television showgirl.
The involvement of so many elderly men in the bunga bunga affair has become a national joke in Italy, with critics likening it to an episode of The Benny Hill Show.
Yet it has also shown how blurred the worlds of politics, media and showbusiness have become.
Mr Fede and Mr Mora have long been household names in Italy, one the presenter of a nightly news programme on the Berlusconi-owned TV channel, Rete 4, the other a flamboyant impresario who has made a career in recruiting models to star in television variety shows and panel games.
In a British context, it would be as if David Dimbleby and Simon Cowell were accused of supplying prostitutes to David Cameron.
"There's this weird way in Berlusconi's Italy in which politics, celebrity, paparazzi and prostitutes all get melded together into a really nasty cocktail," said Alexander Stille the author of The Sack of Rome, a comprehensive study of the Berlusconi phenomenon. "It's a very unhealthy lack of boundaries between realms that shouldn't be mixed."
Mr Fede, Mr Mora and Mr Berlusconi have been colourfully satirised for their role in what Paolo Guzzanti, an Italian cultural commentator and disillusioned Berlusconi supporter, has scathingly dubbed the mignottocrazia, or "tartocracy".
A satirical television programme superimposed the faces of all three men on some old footage of The Benny Hill Show, showing them being chased by girls in police uniforms and tucking bank notes down the cleavage of a showgirl.
Mr Fede is nicknamed 'Fido' for his unwavering loyalty to Mr Berlusconi, and has a reputation for using his evening news programme as a platform for attacking the prime minister's opponents.
He broadcasts Mr Berlusconi's televised speeches in their entirety, and dismisses the frequent allegations of of corruption, embezzlement and tax fraud against his billionaire boss as the works of "idiots" and "stupid Communists".
When Mr Berlusconi - whom he describes as Il Cavaliere, or The Knight - duly won the elections of 1994, he even wept with joy on air.
But he now appears to have been more than just a shameless cheerleader for the Italian leader. Prosecutors allege that he acted as a talent scout, scouring Italy for beautiful young women who might be willing to be introduced to the septuagenarian premier.
It was Mr Fede who "discovered" Karima El Mahroug, the Moroccan-born erotic dancer who prosecutors claim was working as a prostitute at the age of 17 and had sex with the prime minister. Paying for sexual relations with a prostitute who is not yet 18 is a crime in Italy, which carries a prison sentence of up to three years.
Mr Fede reportedly spotted her when he was a judge at a beauty pageant in Sicily in September 2009.
He then allegedly passed her onto Mr Mora, whose offices in central Milan allegedly acted as a form of "clearing centre" for women eager to enter the prime minister's circle in pursuit of money, gifts and help with their show business careers.
Within months, she was attending parties at Mr Berlusconi's mansion at Arcore, near Milan, where the prime minister and his aged cronies were allegedly entertained by groups of pole-dancing, naked women in a special underground chamber.
Prosecutors recorded telephone conversations between Mr Lele and Mr Mora in which they appeared to scramble around at short notice to find girls for Mr Berlusconi's soirees.
The parties were held at his mansion at Arcore – dubbed "Hardcore" by the Italian media – and Villa Campari, a house owned by the prime minister on the shores of Lake Maggiore, north of Milan.
"He's on form and raring to go," Mr Fede told Mr Mora just after 8pm on Aug 25, 2010. "He's just called me and he's on top form. This is the right evening but who can I find?"
Mr Mora rang around his contacts, trying to recruit girls who had appeared on a health programme, Better Living, broadcast on one of Mr Berlusconi's channels.
For his part, Mr Mora has made – and lost – a fortune as a talent scourt. Last year his company, LM Management, was declared bankrupt with huge losses. He reportedly owes the Italian tax man 16 million euros.
Openly gay, he likes to surround himself with young male models, in one instance being photographed reclining on cushions wearing a white kaftan and a white fez.
"Berlusconi had a need for a constant flow of attractive young women to attend his parties and see to his personal needs," said Mr Stille, the author.
"Mora, through his talent agency, had access to pretty young things ready to do whatever they can to break into the world of show business."
Like Mr Lele, Mr Mora describes Mr Berlusconi as "a great man", although his idea of what makes a good leader is not one that is universally share.
His other great hero in Italian politics is Benito Mussolini, the wartime Fascist leader, and his mobile phone has a fascist anthem as a ringtone.
"I'm very enthusiastic when I say I am a fan of Mussolini's," he told the makers of Videocracy, an acclaimed documentary that examined the nexus between politics, sex and television under Mr Berlusconi.
But in Italy, it seems, neither bankruptcy nor accusations of soliciting prostitutes preclude a career in politics.
Mr Mora announced this week that he wants to put himself up as a candidate at Italy's next general election, due in 2013.
"If they want me, I'm ready, although only after I've been acquitted," he said.
by JackRiddler » Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:28 pm
http://www.atmo.se/film-and-tv/videocracy/
Videocracy
In Italy, for thirty odd years, the image has been controlled by one man. TV-magnate and Presidente Silvio Berlusconi has influenced the content of commercial television in a way never before done in Italy. His TV-channels, with their young skimpy-clad girls, are seen by many to mirror his own taste and personality.
In Videocracy, Italian-born director Erik Gandini portrays the consequences of a TV-experiment that Italians have been subjected to for 30 years. Gaining unique access to the most powerful media spheres, he unveils a remarkable story, born out of the scary reality of ”TV-Republic” Italy.
BIG SNIP - LOTSA REVIEWS
Controversy around Videocracy
Both Berlusconi’s Mediaset channels and public broadcaster RAI refused to air the trailer for Videocracy, which Fandango released on 4 September 2009. RAI issued a statement saying that its three networks had refused to promote the movie because ”it is too much critical towards the Italian government”. Read the letter to Fandago (Italian).
In an interview with IndieWIRE, Erik Gandini said, ”Italy is probably the only country in the world where celebrity/TV and political power is merged together in the person of Silvio Berlusconi”.
In a twist of fate, instead of dampening interest in the film, cinema requests from Italy went from 30 to 90 prints!
”I was scared by the ban, and by RAI’s Orwellian-style letter, but the day after there was a huge explosion of interest on the internet”, Erik told The Independent.
Since the premier at the Venice Film Festival the controversy is still on in Italy.
In January, La voci di Romagna reported that a female teacher at Alessandro da Imola highschool near Bologna used Videocracy to illustrate the power of media in Italian society which sparked an outpouring of complaints from parents of students attending her classes. It escalated when local politicians Alessandro Fiumi and Galeazo Bignami from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s party wrote a letter of complaint (Italian) to the Minister of Youth Giorgia Meloni expressing their discontent at showing the film in Italian schools. More in Italian here and here.
Videocracy: a documentary about Italy
Friday, 24 July 2009 16:50
In a late evening of 1976, a local Italian television broadcasts a quiz where viewers at home have to answer questions. For each correct answer, a housewife takes off a garment and does a brief dance. The format is simple and very successful.
Unaware viewers did not know that the show was the beginning of a complete change on the way of doing television. A revolution that would forever change the entire Italian political system, changing the values and becoming a powerful instrument of government for the nation.
The movements of the housewives strips are the first images of Videocracy, a documentary film by Erik Gandini, which will be presented September 3 in the Venice international film festival, in the independent section of the 24th International Critics' Week (SIC). So the public will enjoy eighty minutes of reportage on Berlusconi's Italy and especially on anthropological and cultural changes described by this forty-year-old director who has lived in Bergamo up to 18 years and then moved to Sweden. The one who is speaking, then, is even more ruthless because he is an Italian who looks puzzled at what has become today his country.
After thirty years of seminude girls, shaved guys, millionaires quizzes, gossip of any kind, ever more irreverent jokes and reality shows that have the only purpose of throwing new "human material" in the cauldron of television, who ran everything has reached his goal: give to television the power of democracy. This is the key of the movie. "In a videocracy the key of power is the image - said the filmmaker -. In Italy only one man has dominated the images for three decades. He was a TV magnate, then President: Silvio Berlusconi has created a perfect combination, characterized by political and entertainment television, as anyone else influencing the content of commercial television in the country. His TV channels, known fot the excessive display of seminude girls, are considered by many a mirror of his tastes and his personality."
The chronicle of the last months, especially of recent days, shows the president has never changed his tastes on women.
Above all, what he has never changed is the message that must get to his audience: "have fun and forget the harsh realities of the moment."
Beyond the political views of individuals, the film aims to show how television can affect the behavior of individuals. Nanni Moretti in his film Il Caimano stated that "Berlusconi has already won, he changed our mind three decades ago".
Without him there wouldn't be today people as Lele Mora, Fabrizio Corona or the Big Brother, the "veline", the tronisti, a multitude of people who live only because appears and, thanks to television, may win a seat in Parliament and perhaps even becoming Minister for equal opportunities.
This is Italy of today. It is the documentary by Erik Gandini, which already make people reflect and, surely, will attract attention in Venice as the movies of the most famous directors. It is the power of TV.
From http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jun ... acy-review
Videocracy
[hr]A disturbing look at the TV empire of Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi and the cult of celebrity. By Peter Bradshaw[/hr]
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Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian, Friday 4 June 2010
Article history
Star of the Silvio screen ... Berlusconi.
Erik Gandini's Videocracy is an intriguing, mordant look at the world of the Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi: an acrid Dolce Vita for the modern day. But it's a very different kind of film-making from that of Berlusconi's most famous critic, the satirist Sabina Guzzanti, whose docu-polemics are influenced by Michael Moore. Gandini's film is more like a dreamy, mesmeric and highly disturbing psychogeography of 21st-century Italy, or perhaps a meandering, anthropological study of a dysfunctional cult, ruled by a thin-skinned, self-pitying leader.
Videocracy
Production year: 2009
Countries: Denmark, Finland, Rest of the world, Sweden, UK
Cert (UK): 15
Runtime: 84 mins
Directors: Erik Gandini
It is ostensibly about Berlusconi's TV empire and its crassly sexified world of stripping housewives and endless reality shows, which has engendered in Italy an infatuation with celebrity that perhaps even outstrips Britain or the US. (Berlusconi publishes many gossip magazines.) Everyone wants to be a celebrity and Berlusconi is the biggest celebrity of all. Yet Videocracy is not overtly polemical, nor even, at first, obviously critical. It's 22 minutes before Berlusconi's name is even mentioned, and 29 minutes before we see a picture of his grinning face – on a paparazzi shot, just before we see a picture of Berlusconi's most favoured party guest, Tony Blair.
Gandini begins by interviewing a tragic reality show wannabe: a singing martial arts hombre who aspires to be a cross between Ricky Martin and Bruce Lee. And then he moves on to interview the powerful and fantastically creepy celeb agent Lele Mora, a wealthy Mussolini enthusiast who invites the director to his fabulous home and introduces him to the pretty young boy and girl celebs who are permitted to hang around his pool. This is, of course, situated on Sardinia's Emerald coast, near to where Berlusconi has his own substantial compound: the location for much partying.
The interview with Mora leads us to one of the strangest and most loathsome individuals I have seen in any documentary: Fabrizio Corona, narcissistic body-builder, top paparazzo and celeb-snap agent, a former colleague of Mora who dominates the pap business and became notorious for selling incriminating pictures to their subjects so that they could be suppressed – a blackmailer, in other words, but one who became tolerated by the celeberazzi because his dominance meant he effectively regulated and controlled the market in this kind of material.
It appeared to be something like mafia protection: Corona was briefly imprisoned for extortion and blackmail and emerged from jail a hideous, self-admiring celebrity. These are all Berlusconi's people. Videocracy is a fascinating film, indicative of the new wave of scorn and revulsion felt by a younger generation of Italians for Berlusconi's smug and mediocre rule.
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